Sorry to Bother You
Boots Riley is one of my favourite artists just because he is quite explicitly a hard leftist and he made his music about that. I found out last year out of nowhere that the man is releasing a film and I thought that sounds really odd but so fucking cool. The first Coup song I ever heard was Fat Cats and Bigga Fish and what I liked about that song is that its a very down-to-earth story of a man essentially just waking up in the morning and hustling but the way the story escalates ends up being explicitly Marxist. I enjoyed how it represented Riley’s politics. Knowing that, I was really looking forward to how Riley was going to infused himself in this film.
Boots Riley’s directorial debut is wonderfully angry and anti-capitalism self-examination into modern economy. The biggest strength for this film is the fact that it even exist at all. So many thematic ideas meshed together; its partly a bizarre dark comedy, a racial social economic satire, political activism, virtual fame and a spiteful mean-spirited means of expression for the directors contempt of the world around him. Nothing about this film feels conventional or commercial and that makes me feel happy that it even had a wide release. Lol, how the fuck did Riley get 6 production companies involved?
Riley is saying a lot of a necessary stuff but he is balancing it with some pretty unique visual gags. More importantly, Riley can stick the landing and be able to stay ahead of us in terms of impact, like, my jaw definitely dropped on the floor by the finale.
I want every Boots Riley film to be dripping with ounces of ambition from every single frame like this one. What a trip of a film.
Aladdin (2019)
The makers changed superficial plot points but at its core it kept what made the 1992 Aladdin film problematic. Aladdin still remains the masterclass in Orientalism.
That’s whats so frustrating — this was the perfectly opportunity to right the wrongs of the 1992 Disney animation of Aladdin. To explore a complex ethnic, cultural, and racial dynamic existing within a majority Arab population but instead we get an Orientalist fusion of what Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures are perceived as.
Contrast to Pixar’s Coco which depicted Mexican heritage in a way that gave the Latino community a moment of cultural celebration and pride. They were able to achieve that by heavily involving people of the community in the creative process. Disney hired a creative team for Aladdin that was entirely composed of white people, led by Guy Ritchie.
Edward Said and Jack Shaheen are rolling in their graves — they both can’t and can believe that Disney forgot everything they said.
Boots Riley is one of my favourite artists just because he is quite explicitly a hard leftist and he made his music about that. I found out last year out of nowhere that the man is releasing a film and I thought that sounds really odd but so fucking cool. The first Coup song I ever heard was Fat Cats and Bigga Fish and what I liked about that song is that its a very down-to-earth story of a man essentially just waking up in the morning and hustling but the way the story escalates ends up being explicitly Marxist. I enjoyed how it represented Riley’s politics. Knowing that, I was really looking forward to how Riley was going to infused himself in this film.
Boots Riley’s directorial debut is wonderfully angry and anti-capitalism self-examination into modern economy. The biggest strength for this film is the fact that it even exist at all. So many thematic ideas meshed together; its partly a bizarre dark comedy, a racial social economic satire, political activism, virtual fame and a spiteful mean-spirited means of expression for the directors contempt of the world around him. Nothing about this film feels conventional or commercial and that makes me feel happy that it even had a wide release. Lol, how the fuck did Riley get 6 production companies involved?
Riley is saying a lot of a necessary stuff but he is balancing it with some pretty unique visual gags. More importantly, Riley can stick the landing and be able to stay ahead of us in terms of impact, like, my jaw definitely dropped on the floor by the finale.
I want every Boots Riley film to be dripping with ounces of ambition from every single frame like this one. What a trip of a film.
Aladdin (2019)
That’s whats so frustrating — this was the perfectly opportunity to right the wrongs of the 1992 Disney animation of Aladdin. To explore a complex ethnic, cultural, and racial dynamic existing within a majority Arab population but instead we get an Orientalist fusion of what Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures are perceived as.
Contrast to Pixar’s Coco which depicted Mexican heritage in a way that gave the Latino community a moment of cultural celebration and pride. They were able to achieve that by heavily involving people of the community in the creative process. Disney hired a creative team for Aladdin that was entirely composed of white people, led by Guy Ritchie.
Edward Said and Jack Shaheen are rolling in their graves — they both can’t and can believe that Disney forgot everything they said.
Last edited by cooldude on July 17th, 2019, 6:54 am, edited 1 time in total.